Sep 03 2012

Tired again

Yesterday, (Sunday of Labor Day weekend) we were 550 miles from home and needed to get a jump on our southward trek in order to make appointments set for Tuesday in Tucson. But before we headed out this morning we took another crack at the Slickrock Foot trail because we’d been shut out the day before by thunderstorms.

We managed to cover the entire 2.4 mile trail in about 90 minutes, and it was well worth the effort. We got some of the best views yet of the Needles rock formations that give this district of Canyonlands its name, and several dramatic overlooks into canyons near the Green River. Still, when we got back to the campsite we discovered we were late to depart, since checkout time for Squaw Flat is quite early at 10 a.m. Usually checkout is at noon. Hustling everything together, we managed to clear out and be on the road about 15 minutes after getting back to the site.

On the way in or out of the Needles you will pass the Newspaper Rock State Historic Site. There are actually several “newspaper rocks” in the southwest, including one at Canyon de Chelly that we’ve visited before. They are simply large flat areas of sandstone covered with centuries of desert varnish and riddled with dozens of petroglyphs. We’ve seen a lot of petroglyphs but these were still remarkable for their clarity and descriptiveness. In some cases it’s anyone’s guess what a petroglyph means, while others are perfectly understandable as drawings of commonplace animals, events, and humans. Take a closer look at the photo and decide for yourself what centuries of rock artists were trying to convey.

Other than that, our drive for the rest of the day was uneventful, the way you want things to be when you are hauling a trailer long distances. We made a quick stop in Blanding to dump the tanks and refill the fresh water, and encountered some thunderstorms as we drove through the vast Navajo Nation in northwestern Arizona. It was still raining when we pulled into the Bonito (Coconino National Forest) campground next to Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument just north of Flagstaff AZ that evening.

This was to be our last night on the road, so we had let some supplies dwindle away, including milk and most fresh vegetables. Eleanor made a salad of what was left, and spaghetti with meatballs, and we settled in for the evening while the temperatures outside dropped into the low 50s. I was thinking how novel it would be to need blankets on the bed at night for this one night, before returning to the desert heat on Monday. And it was indeed a pleasantly chilly night.

But our plan to make Tucson on Monday was foiled. We left early and were descending down the 6% grade about 50 miles south of Flagstaff when suddenly we began to hear a “thwap-thwap-thwap” noise. That’s never a good sound. Neither the trailer’s nor the Mercedes tire monitor reported any loss of air pressure, so I was fairly sure it wasn’t a blowout. Still, it had to be investigated immediately. Traffic was heavy, but I managed to get the Airstream off to the breakdown lane within a half mile and from there Eleanor and I searched for causes.

We didn’t find anything. The Airstream was secure, the car looked perfect, and yet … upon driving away, the sound returned. I took the next exit and found a dirt lot where we could search further. Eventually we found the cause: a 1″ wide strip on the inner edge of the right rear tire of the Mercedes had neatly peeled off. In other words, we had a tread separation.

This is a sadly familiar situation. We had numerous tread separations when we were running various brands of ST (Special Trailer) tires on the Airstream, but that problem was resolved when we switched to Michelin LTX Light Truck tires. (They still look like new, by the way, with hardly any visible wear after 21,000 miles!) But I hadn’t expected to suffer this type of failure on the Mercedes.

We’re running the factory-specified tires on the Merc, which are Goodyear Eagle 275/50 R20 RunOnFlats. Our first set was replaced at 34,000 miles, which I was told is “pretty good wear” thanks to the highway miles we tend to cover. The current set has 32,000 miles and I had already made some inquiries about replacements since I figured they had only about 2,000 miles left in them. All of the tires have tread above the wear bar indicators, have been rotated regularly and kept at proper inflation, and are evenly worn, but the one that failed definitely has a little less tread than the others. That doesn’t excuse the failure—it simply should not happen with usable tread still on the tires, even with the added load of towing. I’ll be looking for a different brand this time.

So let’s look at our situation: (1) Tread separation while towing and we have no spare tire (this car comes with Run Flats and no spare carrier). (2) It’s Labor Day, so there are no open tire stores. (3) We’re in a part of northern Arizona where there are few services and no alternate roads to the busy 75-MPH Interstate. (4) Our car takes an odd size tire so a call to Roadside Assistance probably wouldn’t be helpful. The tire will have to be ordered. In short, we found ourselves in the “nightmare scenario” that made me hesitate when I first bought this car.

Although the tire was holding air, there was no way it was going to be safe for another 200 miles at Interstate speeds and in desert heat. Our conclusion was to find a place to park for a night or two, and wait until a set of proper tires could be ordered in. So we pulled up the Allstays app on the iPhone and found a nice RV park in nearby Camp Verde AZ, and gingerly towed the Airstream at reduced speeds another 16 miles down the Interstate to our safe haven.

My plan is to call the tire stores first thing tomorrow and order in what we need, with the hope of getting back on the road by Wednesday afternoon. Prescott AZ is nearby, with plenty of choices, so I’ll be over there tomorrow once someone tells me they can get us five appropriate tires. I say “five” because I have a spare Mercedes rim back at home, and one tire will be mounted on it. The spare will go in the Airstream’s tire carrier, replacing the Airstream spare. Since we switched to Michelin LTX tires on the Airstream two years ago (in other words, real tires instead of that ST-class junk the industry favors), we haven’t had a single puncture or failure, so I don’t mind not carrying a spare for the Airstream. Besides, the Airstream can be towed on three wheels, and the car can’t.

And so our trip has been involuntarily extended. Things could be worse. We’ve got a friend to visit in Prescott. I’m working on the Winter magazine from here, using the campground wi-fi, and we had a nice swim in the pool, and Eleanor is getting the laundry done. When we finally do get home, we’ll be caught up on a few things, rather than coming home to a pile of work. Other than having to reschedule appointments at home, this may turn out to be not a bad diversion.

Jul 25 2012

Thinking about the renovation

We have roughly two weeks between the end of one trip (coming back from Vermont) and the beginning of another (going to Colorado). It’s unusual for us to stop off at home base for a short time like this, but it has been an unusual travel year for us in general.

The two weeks were earmarked for various practicalities, like appointments, the final work on the Fall 2012 issue of Airstream Life, and Alumafandango. Beyond that, I had hoped to have some free time to get started on our Airstream renovation, but very little has been done—I’ve just been too busy. We have samples of Marmoleum in hand, and some definite ideas about upholstery and curtains, but so far haven’t managed to actually get out to the various suppliers and finalize the choices.

Eleanor did remove some of the curtains to see if we could get them clean. Her plan is to re-cover the existing curtains rather than creating new ones from scratch. She did this on Emma’s back window a few years ago and the result was great: a completely “new” looking curtain without all the labor. With the additional fabric overlaying the old, she was able to make the overall curtain a little wider so that it wouldn’t need to be pulled quite as tightly to close, and add all new hook & loop fastener for better closing. Plus, the light-blocking ability of the curtain was greatly improved, which is a nice feature in the bedroom.

Our dinette curtain looks horrible right now. It bears the indelible stains and other marks that testify to the presence of a small child eating spaghetti a few inches away. Emma began living in that trailer when she was a mere five years old, and now she’s 12 and I think at this point she deserves a clean start rather than forever eating next to the minor errors of her youth. And we wouldn’t mind nicer curtains either.

Washing was ineffective. The stains are permanent. It doesn’t matter since they are going to be re-covered anyway. We’ve chosen darker fabrics than the dingy off-white original material, which will cover the underlying history and match the other fabrics and materials that will be installed later. For the upcoming trip to Colorado she is going to install a temporary solution of ribbon strips and new hook&loop so that we can close them better, and in September they’ll come off again for the permanent fix.

Tomorrow we will drop in on an upholstery place, or two, and try to get some samples of fabrics for the dinette. We need to find a good shop to fabricate the new countertops as well. That would be easy if I were willing to install typical household-style counters, but I want these to be the same thinness as the factory ones to keep the weight down and avoid hassles when re-fitting them. Also, we’re going to install a larger, deeper sink, and cut a hole for a NuTone Food Center, enlarge the splashguard, and add in a good quality cutting board, so I’ll be looking for a company that we can work with on the details.

Much of the shopping has been online. In particular, I’ve been researching inverters because a major goal of the renovation is to improve our power situation. Right now we have a great solar power system, but it can’t power appliances like the TV, microwave, NuTone, laptop computers, toaster, and coffee maker. These are all things we would like to be able to use when off the grid. A 2000-watt pure-sine inverter will take care of that problem handily. The LCD TV consumes only about 110 watts, and the laptops are only about 85 watts each, so the electronic devices are easy to run. The NuTone is rated for 625 watts, the toaster and coffee maker are both less than 1000 watts, and the microwave is an unknown (since we are getting a new one) but I expect it to come in at about 1100 watts. We’ll have to be careful not to make toast and coffee at the same time but otherwise it should work fine.

A big decision was to wire the inverter to the whole trailer with an automatic transfer switch so that every outlet will be powered when we are running on batteries. This does require us to remember to set the air conditioner off, but that’s no problem. (With a starting load over well over 2,500 watts, it would trip the inverter.) Wiring the whole trailer simplifies the connection of the inverter. It will sit in a front compartment near the battery so that the DC wire runs are short, and a long AC wire will run to the main breaker box and transfer switch, through the belly pan.

To keep the budget down, I’ve been collecting some items as we travel. I found the NuTone Food Center at Alumapalooza, being sold by David Winick. We already had a big box of NuTone accessories from our days in the Argosy 24 “Vintage Thunder”. We were parked next to a service customer of Paul Mayeux’s last October and bought their used Intellipower 65 amp converter/charger cheap (they were upgrading to a big solar charger). I’m still scouting for someone with some Safari interior cabinetry so I can scavenge that, too.

You can see that nothing is going to happen quickly here. The first real disassembly won’t start until sometime in September. That’s OK. The project is going to be expensive. I want to think everything through carefully. We won’t be doing this again for several years at least, perhaps a decade. So it’s not just a matter of picking out curtain fabric, it requires envisioning what we’ll be doing with this trailer in the next decade, and the challenges it will face in our future expeditions.

I also want to see if we can find ways to actually reduce the weight. Usually in renovations trailers tend to get heavier, as owners add more equipment and household-grade furniture. I can tell a difference of 500 pounds when towing up an 8% grade, by the way the Mercedes’ engine bogs down. When we are lightly loaded it’s a much easier tow. So it would be nice to trim even as little 100 pounds in the cabinetry, and as we take it all apart I expect we’ll find a few places where weight can be cut out.

After tomorrow I doubt we’ll have time to work on the renovation much. But I will be making notes as we take this next trip, to try to discover the little things that could be done to make our Airstream more usable and efficient.

Jul 19 2012

The renovation project

For the past couple of years I’ve been thinking that the interior of our 2005 Safari is looking pretty tired. The vinyl floor is scarred and dull, the curtains are stained, the dinette foam is going flat, and the countertops are scratched. Like a house, an Airstream does require a periodic interior makeover, and it’s looking like time has come for ours.

Two years ago I wrote a blog entry in which I advanced the theory that an Airstream can last a lifetime, with proper maintenance. Now I have to live with those words, as we are beginning to reach the point at which shabby appearance must be dealt with. Spending money on cosmetic upgrades is pretty low on my list. I’d much rather improve the comfort, safety, or functionality of the trailer. But if it doesn’t look good, it’s easy to fall into the trap of neglecting functional items because some little voice in the back of your mind says, “This trailer really isn’t worth it any more.”

Eleanor and I started talking about this a few months ago, and the first question we had to answer was whether we were going to keep the trailer long enough to justify further investment. We decided we were. As long as Emma is living at home (at least 6-7 more years), we’ll want a trailer that can allow us to travel as a family, and this is the only floorplan Airstream ever made with two full-time bedrooms. They may come out with another two-bedroom floor plan in the future, but we like this one and we’ve customized the heck out of it already. So we didn’t foresee making a switch anytime in the near future. Perhaps once we are empty nesters we’ll downsize to a 25 footer, but that’s a long way off. In the meantime, I know we’ll take many more long trips together.

Even though some investment is justifiable to keep the Airstream looking good, we’re going to try to keep the cost of this makeover down by focusing on the areas that need attention the most. We won’t be gutting the entire trailer. The front bed, dinette, and kitchen galley will come out, and the refrigerator compartment, rear bedroom, closets, and bathroom will stay in place. We will not significantly alter the floorplan or plumbing. The cosmetic goal is primarily to replace the floor, countertops, upholstery, and curtains. Of course, while we are touching those parts we’ll also take the opportunity to improve a few things.

We can’t begin to tear the trailer apart right now, because in two weeks we are leaving for Colorado and Alumafandango. So I’ll use the latter part of July to line up outside contractors, select colors for those items, and order various parts. We’ll start the actual work as soon as we get back, approximately September 1, and I think the Airstream will be out of commission through at least November. Other than the specialized jobs of upholstery, floor, and countertops, all of the labor will be done at home in our carport by Eleanor and myself (and any local friends who happen to volunteer).

There’s a good chance we’ll find some hidden issues once we start to disassemble the interior. After all, this trailer has seen over 100,000 miles of towing and the equivalent of about five years of full-time use. I know that we will find missing screws and loose brackets inside the cabinetry, because we have noticed some furniture starting to separate from the interior walls. We plan to reinforce those connections so that the trailer will be ready for rough-road travel, in case we decide to do the Dempster Highway in Alaska or the road to Chaco National Monument. I figure that it’s best to find the little problems proactively rather than when we’re on a long trip somewhere or after the little problems have become big ones.

I’ve got a long list of parts to order in the next few weeks. I’m trying to find someone with a late-model Airstream with the same blonde faux-wood cabinetry who is gutting or renovating, so I can buy some used cabinet materials (drawers, doors, hinges, slides, and sheets of wood) to re-make into a custom cabinet in our trailer. I’m planning to build a combination bench, laundry drawer, magazine rack, shoe cubby, recycling bin, and storage bin along the curbside wall to replace the kludge we’ve got currently.

We’re going to do a full replacement Marmoleum floor to replace the current vinyl floor and bedroom carpet, and ultraleather on the dinette. Eleanor is going to cover the existing curtains with new material and Velcro so that they are more light-blocking and more easily closed. We will also add a big pure-sine inverter to power the TV, microwave, or some kitchen appliances while boondocking. To improve charging while plugged into shore power, we’ll replace the current charger with an Intellipower with 3-stage charging. In the kitchen, Eleanor will get a new (bigger, deeper) sink, a NuTone food center, and inverter outlets for the toaster or coffee maker. We are also considering a water filtration system if we can recover some wasted space under the counter, so I’ll be doing some plumbing improvements there and installing some dividers for better storage.

Little things include completing the conversion to LED lights throughout, a new microwave to replace the one that just died, replacing the hopeless ceiling speakers with surround-sound speakers (so we can actually hear a movie when the A/C is running), adding a good folding cutting board, removing the CD changer we’ve never used, adding an aux input jack, and adding lots of inverter-powered USB power outlets for portable devices.

My intention is to fully document this renovation this fall as it happens. I’ll even be honest about costs, since most people don’t talk about them in their renovation blogs. Right now I have a guesstimation budget of $6,000 for this project, using our own labor. Once we’ve talked to the contractors I’ll be able to come up with a more accurate estimate. In any case, it will cost more than I want to spend, but probably end up as good value for all the use & pleasure we get out of it.

Jul 04 2012

LED lights

My short time in my alter-identity of TBM ended with a sputter on Sunday. The prior two weeks had vanished in a series of indistinguishable work days, in identical 100+ degree temperatures, and the primary variation most days was the choice of evening entertainment. There were quite a few torn movie stubs on the counter by the end of the period.

I made on last attempt to seek out something worth of a Tucsonian bachelor hero, with a second “annual” Sonoran hot dog test. Alas, as it turns out Sunday is not a good day for Sonoran dogs in Tucson. The mobile food trucks which normally can be found on every major boulevard hawking these beloved examples of Tucson’s primary contribution to the culinary arts, were notably absent on Sunday. I found just one: El Sinaloense, working in a vacant lot along Alvernon between Pima and Speedway.

For $3.50 I got a very nice variation on the classic bacon-wrapped Sonoran dog, with a nicer bun (a little flaky, like a muffin) and a bacon-wrapped pepper on the side, plus a Mexican soda, served in the ultra-casual environment of a plastic chair in a dirt lot. No pretense here; the “atmosphere” of the restaurant is just plain atmosphere, the kind that we all breathe every day. I like that because (a) it’s a uniquely southern Arizonan experience to eat a bacon-wrapped hot dog under a tent when it’s 105 degrees, and (b) there are no poseurs just hanging around because it’s a place to be seen by others. There’s a sort of clarity of purpose in that. You go for the food.

I did try a second local establishment, whose name I will withhold because despite a decades-long reputation the “famous” chili dog I was served was horribly disappointing. From a look and taste of the product I would say that the old chili dog has met its superior in the Sonoran dog, and it won’t be long before the chili dog has to step up its game or go extinct in Tucson.

That was it. I sadly packed away my TBM suit with the symbolic ying-yang, wrist protectors, and ever-flaming torch (the latter item quite hard to pack, by the way), closed up the house and boarded an early flight back northeast on Monday. Time to shift gears again.

This week is all about enjoying a last few days of Vermont summer and prepping the Airstream to hit the road. Older brother and I took apart the rear of the BMW motorcycle and replaced the chain and sprockets on Tuesday, had lunch on the deck and looked at the beautiful lake & mountains, then we took Emma out on the boat to watch the fireworks from Burlington harbor in the evening. It’s about a ten mile trip via boat across the deep dark waters of Lake Champlain. Last night the water was smooth and warm, and twinkling with the red/green nav lights of hundreds of other boats that came up the lake to do the same thing.

Today we are going to see the 4th of July parade with some friends up in the small town of Bristol, and this afternoon Emma will go sailing, and maybe Steve & I will take a little motorcycle tour under the green trees that line the rural roads. Everything we’re doing feels like a very northeastern summer thing to do, so despite the very short visit up here I think I’m getting a full dose of the necessary vaccination against the hot southwestern summer that still lies ahead for us.

As part of our Airstream prep I installed a bunch of new LED replacements for the standard bulbs that came with our 2005 Airstream. I have wanted to do this a long time, since lights are huge power consumers in our trailer and we’re always operating in dim light to save power when we are camped without hookups. This trailer has 27 individual lights in it (not counting the refrigerator or stove light, or any of the compartment lights), each one either incandescent or halogen, and if we turned them all on at once they would consume something like 40 amps of power, which is huge. Even our large Lifeline GPL-4D battery with 210 amp-hour capacity would be drained in an evening if we dared turn on all the lights. So most of the time we restrict ourselves to just a few crucial lights, and so the trailer tends to look like a cave in these situations.

I have been slowly experimenting with different LED solutions over the past two years, installing various LED “pads” and bulb replacements in different color temperatures to try to find the best for our situation. Quite a few of them were disappointing, either for poor light output or inconsistent color (some looked greenish or bluish). A few were defective, and I returned them. None were particularly impressive.

Recently I bought a bunch of newer bulb replacements from LED4RV, which is run by a guy named Dan Brown. These were different from the ones I’d tried before. Instead of individual LED bulbs mounted on a single pad or cylinder, the new models used Surface Mount Device (SMD) type LEDs, which appear as small yellow squares when the light is off. The SMDs put out more light with fewer LEDs, so don’t just buy the bulb that has the most LEDs and assume it’s the brightest. Dan provides a little chart to compare the lumen output of each bulb.

After some experimenting, the choice was clear. For the big double light fixtures that are mounted on our ceiling, Dan’s “1156 Bright White 18 SMD LED cluster bulb” is perfect. The color temperature is just slightly cooler than the incandescent bulbs it replaced, so no weird blue/green color like a fluorescent. A pair of these use 12% of the electricity of the hot incandescent bulbs and put out nearly the same amount of light.

For the swiveling halogen reading lamps, we used the “12 LED Warm White Reading Spot” (G4 style). In these light fixtures the lens is clearer than the overhead lights, so a bit of warmness in the color temperature helped. These lights were incredibly bright and really output more of a flood than a spot of light. They’re great in the dining area but by the bed they’re really almost too bright and I may replace those later with the 9 LED version.

The power savings is incredible. The draw of these lights has been reduced from amps to milliamps, as measured by the Tri-Metric amp-hour meter installed in our Airstream. We can use twenty of our new lights on roughly the same power budget as three of the incandescent bulbs.

The only catch is the high cost of LEDs. These lights were about 15 bucks each, which really adds up when you’re trying to replace 27 lights. To economize, we focused on the lights we use the most, and in some cases we only replaced one side of a two-bulb fixture. When trying to conserve power we can turn on only the side that holds the LED bulb.

Even considering the cost of LEDs, they are a relatively cheap solution to the power problem. You can do very well simply by adding battery capacity and swapping out your lights for LEDs. With those choices you can reduce the power demand of your lights by nearly 90% and perhaps double your power supply, which translates to extra days of boondocking capability for a few hundred dollars. That’s less than a quiet generator or solar panels, and it’s a solution that always works regardless of sunshine or fuel supply, so it’s a very sensible option for occasional boondockers.

I should also mention that these days Airstream has, uh, seen the light, and their new trailers come with a lot more LEDs than ever before. It’s just those of us who own older models that need to make the upgrade. Based on the success of the lights we have installed so far, I’ll probably go ahead and buy eight or nine more of the bulbs later this year.

That’s not our only Airstream job this week. Our plan is to launch the Airstream on Friday, which means part of today and all of tomorrow will be dedicated to getting road-worthy again. Eleanor and I need to glue a patch onto the awning where carpenter ants chewed a hole in it last year, I need to clean the roof again, and there’s plenty of re-packing to do. Our trip plan is vague but we know we have to get back across the country by July 17, so we’ve got to get moving.

Jun 06 2012

Planning for ‘fandango

I would like to claim that we are still in the post-palooza recovery, and that’s the reason we must remain parked in Lou & Larry’s driveway, but in reality I think that the recovery was complete last night. Now we are just hanging around because it is easy and fun to be here at the all-inclusive Northeastern Ohio Airstream Commune & Hotel California. Lou & Larry have rolled out the red carpet for us every year since 2006. As they say, you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.

Living here is like having an extended family, composed entirely of Airstreamers. There are three other Airstreams lounging here in the two driveways, and we all meet up daily for a group dinner inside the house. Last night Eleanor brought over peanut noodles, and a bowl full of honeydew melon & blueberries with mint/lime sauce (both dishes using recipes she demonstrated at Alumapalooza), Loren grilled sausages with onions & peppers, Shinim made delicious Korean appetizers and cellophane noodles with beef, sKY made an avocado & yogurt dip in her Vitamix blender, and Lou & Larry supplied all the condiments, bread, and cheese. Eclectic and fun.

At 8:30 we headed over to Loren’s house across the street to try out the Wii game “Rock Band.” I’d never played it before. They have the full setup: two guitars, keyboard, microphone, and drum kit, so we could all play at once. I started on drums but was pathetic, so I switched to bass guitar. Mike and Loren were expert on keys, while slaDE and I struggled by on the guitars, but eventually we all got the hang of it and it was hilarious fun. Eleanor and Emma showed up later and joined in, singing and playing drums. My favorite time was when Eleanor and I did a duet of “Space Oddity” (David Bowie) while I played bass. They nicknamed me “Bouncy.” Whatever. It felt like the old days in high school, only it sounded a lot better. Loren says this has to be our official post-‘palooza decompression program from now.

Today the plan was to drive up to Cleveland to visit the West Side Market, but unfortunately a repair intervened. It seems like something always needs tweaking when we come to Lou & Larry’s, which is actually fine because Larry always knows exactly where to go to buy a part or get something fixed. This time it was one of the propane tanks, which began hissing out gas when I turned it on. There’s a rubber gasket inside the valve that somehow got mangled and wasn’t able to seat correctly. We hauled it down to the local propane supplier to get the entire OPD valve replaced (replacement parts aren’t available) and it will be ready this afternoon.

I suppose we could have still headed to Cleveland but I really need to get more work done. I spent the entire day Tuesday locked up in the Airstream, catching up on various things that were neglected over the past two weeks of traveling and ‘paloozing. The Fall 2012 issue needs a week of my attention and with travel plans I don’t really have a week of time available, so justifying another day away is difficult. We’ve also got to get on the Alumafandango tasks, which are innumerable and complex.

Brett had a mishap yesterday on the road; the U-joint on the Argosy motorhome’s driveline broke, which caused the driveshaft to drop and flail around causing secondary damage. After a AAA tow, he and Lisa are now stuck in East Overshoe (somewhere in Tennessee) with a pair of mechanics named Cletus (both of them) whose primary tools seem to be hammers. Parts availability is poor, to say the least. Cletus and Cletus banged away at his motorhome until 1 a.m. last night and at this point he’s hoping that he can get a hack repair that will get them home so that the entire thing can be disassembled and fixed correctly later at twice the cost.

I’m sympathetic, but on the other hand Brett’s conundrum is great for business. To distract himself from the saws, hammers, and blowtorches underneath his feet, he has been working on ‘fandango stuff. We’ve had a good call about the tasks ahead, and we are starting to come to grips with all the issues. So far we’ve covered the basics of volunteers, apparel, transportation, seminars, equipment rental, meals, contests, and entertainment, and we’ve confirmed Lodge Logic (cookware) will be coming in as a sponsor. If Brett is stuck in Tennessee for a few days we’ll get this thing nailed down in no time!

That’s probably not going to be the case, however. We both have miles to go and much to do. He’ll get on the road today most likely, and we will be heading out shortly as well. Last night Eleanor and I worked out our routing for next few days, which is pretty straightforward (I-90 thru OH, PA, NY, then Adirondacks and on to VT).

We are going to mix up the usual route with a few stops, including a long-anticipated taste of Forbidden Amish Donuts. We will depart on Thursday and plan to arrive in Vermont on Saturday, which for those of you who are curious, is back to our usual rate of 150-250 miles per day. We will try to avoid ending up in East Overshoe like Brett.